The Inquisition politely suggests you may wish to avoid contact with unsuitable copies of the Holy Word. If in doubt, deal only with a licensed priest.

VATICAN CITY, Office of the Holy See, Hear, and Throat Specialist Saturday — Laymen telling each other biblical tales has been a commonplace sin for years, but now the pirates of the Word have set their sights on completely new targets — entire Bibles.

In the old days, when you wanted to hear about our Lord, you asked a priest. With the advent of "printing," worshippers are increasingly turning to the "book" and printer-to-reader word-carrying "bookware" to get their fix of the Lord. The books are produced using movable type on sheets of paper, bound together at one edge. There are people called printers who make these. There are even "book shops" people obtain these books from.

There is just one small problem with this printing trend — a large proportion of these books are illegal Bibles, despite printers' claims that printing presses have non-infringing uses.

"Printed book sharing is a huge issue at the moment. We are seeing thousands of people engaging in the practice on a daily basis," said Fr. David Price, Head of Piracy Intelligence at Inquisitional. "Over one month you might see ten thousand copies of the Good Book."

While many illegal book sharers may feel they are safe due to the enormous scale of the problem, it is still possible to track their activities, and in some cases introduce ecclesiastical sanctions. Buying illegal content is hardly an anonymous activity, as Fr Price explained.

"When you buy a piece of content, your neighbours, being a bunch of nosey gossips, will shop you in a second for a free indulgence. It's then quite easy to track you back to a particular parish. Then the kindly gentlemen of the Inquisition will lovingly assist you in coming to a realisation of your error and help you on the path to correcting it.

"Do the right thing. Talk to your priest. Do as he says. And when he casually asks if you know anyone with a 'book' in their possession ... we hope you will let your conscience be your guide. Won't you?"